The present invention relates generally to neutron detecting scintillators and devices. More specifically, the present invention relates to neutron detecting scintillators, devices and related methods, a scintillator including a plurality of microcapillary tubes loaded with a scintillator composition including a plastic scintillator and a neutron absorbing material.
Scintillation spectrometers and devices are widely used in detection and spectroscopy of energetic photons and/or particles (e.g., x-rays, gamma-rays, neutrons). Such detectors are commonly used, for example, in nuclear and particle physics research, medical imaging, diffraction, non-destructive testing, nuclear non-proliferation monitoring, and the like.
Scintillators and scintillation based detectors are generally well known. Scintillation spectrometry generally comprises a multi-step scheme. Specifically, scintillators work by converting energetic particles such as x-rays, gamma-rays, neutrons, and the like, into a more easily detectable signal (e.g., visible light). Incident energetic photons/particles are stopped by the scintillator material of the device and, as a result, the scintillator produces light photons mostly in the visible light range that can be detected, e.g., by a suitably placed photodetector. Various possible scintillator detector configurations are known. In general, scintillator based detectors typically include a scintillator material optically coupled to a photodetector.
Neutron diffraction provides an excellent tool for the analysis of biological matter. For example, unlike x-rays, neutrons interact with nuclei of atoms in a molecule instead of the electrons. Neutron diffraction techniques, for example, can be more useful than x-ray diffraction in determining positions of protons. One example of a neutron detection based techniques in biology includes single crystal diffraction techniques, which is used for a wide variety of biological analysis including protein analysis, solvation studies, drug design, and the like. Another example of an important neutron detection based application is neutron radiography.
Despite advantages and great promise of neutron detection based techniques, the techniques of neutron crystallography and neutron radiology are relatively underutilized compared to other techniques such as x-ray crystallography. One reason for that is the lack of suitable high performance neutron detectors, such as position sensitive thermal neutron detectors. Most of the area detector technologies rely primarily on imaging plates, multi-wire chambers and photographic methods. All these systems have significant performance limitations in terms of sensitivity, position resolution, count rate capability, logistic complications, or lack of real-time output. The performance of currently available detectors is thus a factor limiting more wide-spread implementation of neutron detectors, and is due at least partially to the current lack of scintillators suitable for high performance neutron detection. For example, currently available scintillators with slow response, and low discrimination between neutron and other events, such as gamma-ray events, typically must sacrifice spatial resolution for detection efficiency, thereby further degrading the performance.
Thus, there is a need for improved neutron detecting scintillators and related devices and assemblies, and methods of fabrication. In particular, there is a need for neutron detecting scintillator and devices that provide improved performance, including enhanced signal-to-noise ratio, improved spatial resolution, and the like, and which can be efficiently and economically manufactured.